Gaiutra Bahadar and Sunita Mukhi

00:03 I'm suda tomoki. I'm all of 54 years old today is the Mets 31 2014. We are in New York and I know Gaia trial actually as a presenter as part of a program that salvation women's creative Collective together with the Asian American Writers Workshop co-sponsored her book launch entitled. Coolie Woman and

00:40 We were very fascinated as well as me particularly was very fascinated by having this conversation with with her because of her experience as a person of Indian descent, but part of this huge diaspora, and I'm personally invested in this because I also am a product of the Indian diaspora other Despereaux sent. I thought it would be wonderful to have this conversation with a fellow diasporic in this story Corps session.

01:20 My name is guy trabahador. I am 39 years old that today is May 31st 2014 and where in Foley Square in lower Manhattan and I know Sunita because she has very gracefully invited me to be a part of this conversation and the organization that she's a part of Saucy they were they were such lovely lovely hosts to my book launch in in New York last well, so who are you guess how this person of Indian descent from Guyana. I was born in Guyana, which is a tiny country in South America of population fewer than 1750000 people and I was born

02:20 In a village about two kilometers away from a sugar Plantation or their culture Estates. Now I live there until I was six when my family migrated to Jersey City in 1981 and I grew up there really. So in terms of who I am. I am chinese-american of Indian origin. I suppose. Those are all that the hyphens that matter of a hyphenated identity. I'll share with you what my ancestry is what my ethnicity is. Actually I was born and bred in the Philippines grew up in Manila. So I share with you that. The fact that I was I am of indian-origin but board somewhere else unlike you do I was brought up in the Philippines and only came in my adulthood to the United States not with my family to pursue education.

03:20 The graduate school, so I came here when I was 25 and transformed as and I've been here ever since 1985 in the United States a little different than the way you you you came to the United States, but I think what's also interesting is to understand how we are similar.

03:48 In the fact that we are of Indian ancestry.

03:51 And I wanted you to tell me a little bit about how that translated or happened in your life in Jersey City. How did it survive or thrive?

04:06 My sense of Indian identity will half of my native country is of Indian origin and they were taking their Indians were taken to the West Indies as indentured laborers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and as with Trinidad and Jamaica Indian communities flourished and religion was preserved language in some places better than others. So I had a sense of an Indian identity from from that background and when we move to Jersey City, which as you know is a very diverse place we moved into an immigrant community and there were immigrants from all over the world. Really. I mean, they were Mexican Ukrainian Indian Jamaican, but there was a high percentage of Indians.

05:06 India Premier League trophies and in the 1980s this actually created

05:14 Some tension and there was a backlash against in particular Indians from young people young men in particular who belong to a gang called it. But yes. Yes. I'm familiar with that. So when I was a pre-teen growing up in the Jersey City Heights, there was a gang who were physically attacking Indian American Indians and Indian looking folk so they couldn't see the subtleties of identity that but we're talking about they couldn't see that I was Guyanese for instance. I just looked Indian to them. So I mean it was really really quite awful. There was a man who was attacked with baseball bats a few blocks from our house. Melrose Moody with his name. No never smoothie was in Hoboken pretty close to where I grew up but there were lovers movie was killed and then there was a Doctor Who was

06:14 Tackle. Okay. Yeah, he suffered severe brain damage. So all of this by way of saying my sense of being Indian was the start of shaped by by all of this that was happening in my neighborhood when we were my family and I we were under siege because we looked in the end. So what does that mean? How does that affect my relationship to Indian my sense of of being in the end it really strengthen this although, you know, I have never been to India. My parents have never been to India's grandparents had never been to India. So yeah, I mean this experience of racism really shaped our sense of who we were all just say briefly that there was another experience of racism in Guyana that shape the sense of being Indian. It's a long and complicated story probably the subject of my Nextbook but

07:14 So half of Guyana is Indian roughly half his Indian and the other half is African descendants of slaves and these communities were historically in competition with each other. It was sort of the British divide and conquer then divide and Rule and

07:33 Politics there is very racialized. So there is an Indian political group and there isn't political party and an African political party when we left vanity African political party was in power and had been for three decades. There was a dictator and who had rigged elections for three decades to stay in power and sort of systematically discriminated against the Indians and the country which is why it was such a huge Exodus to New York and Toronto and London and why there is such an enormous Chinese Community here in New York right now. So I mean my sense of being Indian was unfortunate unfortunately shaped by to very dark experiences in Guyana was

08:23 Being that you're being discriminated by a primarily Africa Africa people of African descent. Whereas in the in Jersey City is people are primarily of white right there. And then I mean, I could empathize with them even at the age of 12 or 13 could see that they were there was something they had to protect and there was a sense of of loss or a kind of bewilder bewilderment not really knowing what was happening to the neighborhood. Who are these people what are there about end and why they doing so well as well buy Jersey City at that. Of time post-industrial City had lost a lot of jobs manufacturing jobs that was having a tough time. So to see a community come in from the outside and seemingly fries academically and financially I can see how

09:23 That would make someone to be a threat again my experience of being Indian in a place that was not primarily until it's a little different. My my my parents migration to the Philippines was as a result of partition.

09:46 All those subcontinent the Indian subcontinent British India divided on on religious lines religious and nationalistic line. So Pakistan and India were created after the dependents. My people are all Cindy origin and they were what is the they came from what is now known as Pakistan in hedrabad send and after partition and being of Hindu religion, they felt it was safer to migrate to India so bomb being pulled over the places where they migrated and my father who was all over 18 years old or 15 years old with Partition. But after two years of vagabonding in Bombay was decided that he should earn a living and he came to the Philippines where his brothers already had migrated.

10:45 And try to make a life for himself in the Philippines and after a few years he decided to get a wife and he went to pick up my mother threw an arranged marriage in India again, and I was conceived and I guess Board of the Philippines but the entire, you know earning a living. Yeah. Yeah. It's a Global Network. It's a different kind of diaspora as compared to being sent off as indentured labor like with the Gujarati status American style or you have to be to be Merchants. Was there any kind of an Indian Community in Manila presently the the in the Philippines there was a sizeable Cindy population. That was also native-born.

11:45 So coming as a result of partition and as an overflow of the migrations to Hong Kong, which was more amenable to to free trade that are because they're also part of the British Empire about Hong Kong was at 1.0 free trade zone things to list and and they did come to the Philippines. A lot of Cindy's there are there are also other other Indian migrants to the Philippines the punjabis, especially the Sikhs have come and they were primarily in the trade of money lending especially for

12:27 For people who have no have no credit and they would for you everywhere called 56 s so they would let you five pesos today and next week you have to give them six bucks. So there was like a fight the five sixes. So they they would lend money to the very low income people who could not get clothes from the banks or anything. So they were at that's what that's how they mobilize the economy are primarily shopkeepers textile owners Distributors of of goods and they did that inform the community there until when when growing up there the sense of indianness was very particular kind of Indian is it was an Indian nurse that was born of being Cindy, which is a certain kind of Mercantile.

13:21 Of a little bit different than other kinds of Engineers that I experienced in the United States and the kind of movie list of the kind of idiot as I grew up with was that we would we would perform certain rituals, especially Hindu rituals at home. But our shrines be very eclectic it would include for example, if he said my home Jesus and Mary because the Philippines has priority Roman Catholic and it would include the Sikh gurus like Guru nanak and Guru Gobind Singh the first of the last and we would have our own Cindy day to Julie, LOL. Who is dumb

14:08 The river got syncretism of all the different absolutely but also the difference of the difference of being in Roman Catholic Philippines also underscored are Indian this quote in do this. Right and we have different Customs. I mean Filipinos would eat and we were not permitted to for example. Our food was spicy Filipino food is more sour salty, you know, and that would be very that would then Define the difference and our facial features would be different though. We were all brown.

14:54 A large extent but I remember being being told that you know, our noses were higher than the Filipinos are Filipinos themselves would say, you know, the the noses of you a few Boom by that would be the term that they would use sometimes pejorative Boom by zaz in Bombay Mumbai City Batangas meaning sharp as compared to theirs which was not Europe which they would call Paulo.

15:26 And all those kinds of little differences and then of course when it when I went to school and we had to go to our prom for example because of the educational system in the Philippines, at least the school that I went to was very much back on after the American educational system. So we would have problems also and it would be very easy for my classmates to get dates, but I would have to ask permission. That was a big negotiation. I could only go if I broke my cousin or if I secretly did it cuz I went to the Saint Dominic Academy prom in Jersey City with my cousins, but I was only permitted because if I went to my sister and brother didn't have that experience, they brought whatever they wanted but being the eldest child.

16:26 Immigrant parents strictness

16:30 It's very interesting and then did your family go back and forth quite a bit between India and Philippines. I assume because they were traitors only not not not only because of that but because my grandparents were still alive and thriving in the in Pune in India. So we used to visit even my auntie's my mother's sister's we're in now. My father sister was in the Bombay. So we used to visit. So we had a very we had we had a physical connection with India and we would visit and of course the great connection was through Hindi film songs and my grandmother who stayed with us my paternal grandmother insisted as we were growing up that we should perform Indian dances.

17:25 And it didn't mean Indian classical dance if it's meant to be interpreting Indian Hindi film songs Bollywood. We didn't know the term that so but it was like Indian have to do Indian music Indian dance and we have to be onstage and practice our Indian s on stage all the time.

17:42 So we celebrated the Hindu festival of lights Diwali. We celebrated August 15th, you know, we all this nationalistic things about India and all that. I'm sure you must have experienced that also in Jersey City Jersey City and in terms of Bollywood and ceremonial Indian this it's amazing to me how powerful Bollywood is as a maker of of identity because I remember as a child like a five-year-old kid. I'm going to the Sugar Estate club my dad work there. So he belongs to the club and seeing other men dress film and I don't remember anything about the but all I remember is at 5, seeing a lion leaping from the screen dimmest Bollywood film, but it was when I was growing up and when my parents were growing up and still

18:42 Is such a strong as again, like I said maker of identity and other people don't understand or a whole lot of people don't understand the words and Hindi film song There is the sense that the emotion is there that they understand without actually literally understanding they get it right. So I think some of the some of the ways that Express even themselves with their body and their facial expressions is like we can't do the movement.

19:18 There was such a because of the distance, although maybe this is not such a great Theory because obviously the Philippines is distant to but there wasn't a whole lot of interaction between India and Guyana over the decades and generations. Not a whole lot of movement back and forth except by Mission and the occasional missionary. So I think Guyanese Indian culture evolved at a distance and the the food from the parts of India that immigrants had left was preserved almost like this flying Amber. So when you go to Guyana the Indian culture that you experiences is 19th century boys pretty culture.

20:04 In the Philippines in Manila. Cindy culture given the wasting these are because they they are really off the diaspora and have families all over the world there foods that are certain there that particular Cindy foods that we all share, you know, but the part of the Cindy mentality of the diasporic Mercantile Cindy is to develop a taste for cosmopolitan Cuisine and even to develop a taste for cosmopolitan fashion. Okay, so you can do me Cindy but part of being Cindy is to have this kind of Cosmopolitan this right thing identity is almost out of the transnational. Yes, I will trust Ashland. It also is an identity of consumption of wealth also that you know in order for you to be able to consume these guys

21:04 International things you must have money. Okay, so that's important. And the reason why I bring it up is because growing up as a Sunday and then coming to the United States to find out and get acquainted with other kinds of Indians from India or from the desperate the emphasis of one's life goes very different. So growing up it was not in it was not necessarily important for a woman like myself to be educated. It was important for me to be Cosmopolitan and able to take care of the house and to be able to be presentable as a wife of a potential rich, man.

21:47 Okay to also the religious rituals Etc. If I can smoke Cindy very good device could cook very good. But if I could manage our house Excellence, right and managed funds and all that, but when I came to the United States all that was also important but more important was for somebody to be educated. So education was given a very high importance and I kind of defied my own cast by not doing that not being this this desirable hostess with the mostess. I became a PhD, you know, which is why I think of the United stand of the first thing you made that choice before you even left the Philippines before you even interacted with other Indians here, but it became

22:42 Confusing for me because the Indians here whom I met in the academic circles in the Professional Engineers that I met were valuing that very much. Where as my people in my community were perplexed why she going to the States to become a for Indian graduate student, but she should be pursuing know something interesting to see that kind of fun to see the difference and to find actually a home.

23:15 All of my Indian self in a different place and ironically to find it in the United States that kind of any that's because of the diversity are the different kinds of Indians that migrated. Do you remember your first impression that the United States all my first of all, you know, we were already painted people from Manila in the Philippines or anything said about the United States, of course history of because of the history of the history of the relationships between the United States and the Philippines, right and it stated is to state that because Americans have really influence the education. The best schools are in English medium. Our histories have been refashioned in with America as a great savior.

24:04 And then again refashion with Americas are grieving. List as if evil imperialist, so

24:13 There's an ambivalence towards the United States but also an aspiration of a life is life is better in the United States. And that's when I came to the United States. I wanted to experience this kind of freedom.

24:28 But also with a heavy heart because I saw the United States as an imperialist power who was oppressing the Philippines right because of IMF and World Bank and and the history

24:40 But also there was his own personal need to you know, I need to to be free. I need to explore, you know things of the mind because I'm not leaving work and I don't have those aspirations else. Could I still loved Indian s so how do I practice the Indian s in the way that I'd like you to without the operations of a of this restrictions. I came to the United States and my first impression was San Francisco Which Wich

25:12 Which was this lovely board City by the bay, which had

25:20 Great diversity of Asians a big Filipino population in a lot of ways much more than even New York free Southeast Asian very a lot of Filipino immigrants and the and the pain in very Liberal Liberal. So I felt I actually felt it was a wonderful introduction to the United States.

25:51 Did the image that a lot of people remembering and I had I was able to go to San Francisco State University. I was in the Philippines. I was Roman Catholic schools until college and then we have that in common too, exclusive girls schools, but College co-ed. I was afraid in your case to call it was cool. So what happened was it was very liberating to be in a secular State University.

26:32 Without Jesus looking at you upon you and for me going to a Catholic girls. Look just a Catholic High School was it was very traumatic events because I went to public schools for the eighth grade in Jersey City Public Schools there in the 80s. They were taken over by the state and my parents were concerned. So I mean, they're both devout Hindus. My mom has for decades prayed at 7 a.m. And 7 p.m. In front of her linen closet of God. So, you know, we all had to to to pray no matter what your background was and I was settling like encountered with all of this religion. That was not the religion. I was raised to know and so I sort of emerged from it probably an agnostic.

27:32 Yes, but religion definitely plays a big part in and I'm having a different religion and having to explain why your religion looks have have these Gods multiple gods for one thing and why do they look like? This is mythical multiple arms elephant head. It's natural to us, but unnatural to others right as as Hinduism grew up with that. And in fact, I remember one story when I was young before Catholicism was ecumenical we were basically told that if you were begging which I was at that time, I would go to hell and I was really upset my mother. We need to be baptized going to hell.

28:27 And she said but why she said cuz you know where we we we we were not born Catholic and then if you haven't been baptized and then that's when she showed me the shrine with Jesus and Mary and said, you know, they're all friends right? Although they all friends. They all belong to the same family. So you don't need to become Catholic because if they're all friends, but you don't think she didn't even say anything negative about them. But you said you knew we were born like this. So let's just keep it and that was my parents attitude to it may have been because they you know it growing up in in what was Ben British Guiana as they then you had a coexist with Christianity and I mean, they celebrate it Christmas there as well as all of the Hindu festivals, so they were totally open to sending their their daughter their daughters to

29:27 Catholic schools and then sort of guiding them on how to integrate all of that and be a whole human being celebrated Christmas is the best holiday in the Philippines is the best time to go back home by JD to visit. My family is to celebrate Christmas and not just only for the gifted all that but also all the socializing in the love being in the end you're seeing you the the the the fact that everybody is just in such a good mood because it's Christmas.

30:02 Yeah, it's interesting how he is trying is also become keepers of identity. That's not exactly the word I want to use but when we move to the US first we were leaving my family and then we finally moved out into an apartment of her own in the first thing. My mom did was she there was a linen closet in the bedroom and she has devoted the the the top two shelves to her more. These are images of the Hindu gods and she said it up there my it's just such a strong and powerful image to me growing up. It was always my mom getting up early in the morning opening the linen closet and seeing her Bhajan and she's sing so beautifully and so soulfully and it was almost as though, you know, all of the struggle all of the reinvention they came to the US in their twenties and they had a hard time of it. Now all of that was being poured into her singing of the button.

30:59 The speed of the things that you and my mother was a virgin singer in the community. She would be asked to sing and she would invent to the words Soulful and change the words like a Hindi Bhajan. She would make it to Cindy cuz I was her language or or she would change from Cindy to order which is her other language that she liked or Hindi or whatever. She would also be a singer. We were destined to have this conversation. Is it is it is it it was her way actually of connecting very strongly to her gods and her religion as well as to the community that was her service to the community to sing during the various religious occasions, and I think maybe a little bit of vanity because she's

31:59 She was performing at the back from her.

32:05 Did the 4th so I think she was a lady about a graceful lady. I'm just a flamboyant price of items. Like I'm louder than her and I have not inherited her singing call the actor of a dancer Bollywood dancing. That's how I started. I started reinterpreting are being taught and reinterpretations of Hindi film dances and we didn't have videos or anything at that time when I was growing up by generation. So it was a z invention from books.

32:46 Indian classical dance book and doing the poses and looking at pictures and Reinventing the dance that way and then videos came much later, maybe a decade later and that's when we started funeral imitating the the the film but the way I grew up learning Indian dance was actually really from Indian classical poses an Indian images of statues answer to which I discovered was how they reinvented Indian classical dance in India. Anyway during the Nationalist movement to pictures of the sculptures and whatever was the residue of

33:28 Of the dancing that was happening there by the by the folk people ended up. The other other dances was really quite fascinating, but that was that was my in into Indian culture.

33:43 Well, I'm I do remember leaving Guyana that the night we left Guyana and I do remember arriving in the US until you very quickly. We we lived as I said in the village so it took a really long time to get to the capital to make the flight and we had to spend the night at my dad's Cousin's in in town. And I remember two things. She I mean while the adults were talking and making their plans she gave me a can of V8 and a comic book of Greece. I guess Bree said just come out. He was 1981. So a few years later. There was one of her Greece Athens Greece to Athens Greece, please and forever since then, I've always Associated that film with Coming to America in retrospect. It's really appropriate because here you have Sandra the the innocent to be remaking herself Reinventing herself as something so much.

34:43 Transgressive and interesting. Yes at the end of it all she does she does become but I think of that in in the moment and I think of Coming to America the that that is true, but you know, what fascinates me about besides the fact that Greece has a great story and you know and all these older people are playing very young people. That's all of these performative genres like the musical or the film's the book you've written poems. These are the ways in which people can capture whatever they understand. Their cultural being is whatever the cultural Essences and then they can be created.

35:33 And Performing musicals for example is a way of course of entering into the world of America.

35:40 And it makes me remember when we had recessed in our in our schools in Manila doing all this music cuz during recess or break or lunch break was our way of having fun instead of thinking about boys. We were the musicals and that is also why did America beat was very familiar to us? Because we very familiar to me because of all these does music affect people recreating also so you had the American musicals you had the Hindi film interpretation the budget that Mama used to sing creating this kind of a complex complex hybrid.

36:29 Express all that and to use it out.

36:33 And to be somebody else. So do you think your

36:38 Different from your mama. I was just going to say I have such admiration for people who were actual immigrants much child immigrants who came in their twenties or perhaps even older and had to reinvent themselves. Am I I am a very different from my mom. I'm far far more pampered and my life was has just been so much easier and I I really going to have this amazing sense of gratitude to them for the sacrifices that they may have life and they've given that to you.

37:15 I had a great life in Manila. I left it. I left that Bourgeois life action soon as I could pursue the life of the mind and heart and the hearts and sometimes I wonder whether I'm glad you made that choice of the wealth of knowledge and experience and the stories we can tell and the fact that I can express myself in in the Arts and I've been able to develop my Meijer is bigger Aldrete. This is great wealth great cultural capital.

37:57 But I d-did Eva Busch Wildlife for that in order to be able to live which I feel is a return like I understand what you're saying from a different perspective. Skeleton. I don't know that we have the time so I used to be a proper middle-class person as well. I wish I worked for a newspaper in Philadelphia and then I left that and I'm 30 working on this book project which is taken six years of my life and you know here my parents have sacrificed and work so hard set me to really good schools and I gave all of that up and went on this tangent and was working on this book and had no salary no health insurance place to live but never been happier in my sights and I feel such a sense of accomplishment that if I die tomorrow, I will have left something of significance behind so I know but it's also very important to know this history.

38:57 To write this history to know this is true, even for yourself and for others, even if they are perplexed by it at first either but it's very important to have this even have this kind of conversation storycorps to Archive a diasporic. But you know, I'm happy that you're able to come today and share with us again, and I bet you have privilege me to have this conversation at the total pressure. So it's just another Caribbean island.

39:57 Anyway, so thank you so much. Thank you so much.